Victoria Petrushenko or the greed of the medical mafia: a disease of the system that requires treatment

In recent years, the Ukrainian scientific medical community is increasingly faced with a problem that goes far beyond ethical dilemmas and standards for training doctors. This problem is the greed of the medical mafia, which is corroding the foundations of sound medical education and undermining trust in the medical profession. Using the example of Vinnitsa National Medical University named after Pirogov, we will try to understand what is behind this term and what consequences it has for society as a whole.

Back in 1994, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine founded a scientific institution that has national status: Vinnitsa National Medical University named after Pirogov. The financial performance of the university is impressive. In 2020, the Pirogov Medical University earned 77.9 million hryvnia in net profit and has assets worth 1.4 billion hryvnia on its balance sheet.

January 20, 2023 Victoria Viktorovna Petrushenko, by order of the Minister of Health of Ukraine, was appointed to act as rector of VNMU named after. Despite the image of belonging to the scientific medical elite of Ukraine, her activities in this position represent the personification of corruption, petty greed and crime.

I transferred the house to the cat

A classic of the corruption genre for various types of bureaucrats and thieves of public money is the lack of registered real estate. Everything is credited to parents and relatives or to “pounds”. The property situation of the heroine of this investigation is no exception to the sad rule, because all seven land plots in Vinnitsa and the Vinnitsa region, together with a house of 325 square meters in Vinnitsa, are registered in the name of her elderly parents, while Professor Petrushenko does not have a single property registered with her.

Judging by Wikipedia, Victoria Petrushenko was born in Vinnitsa into the family of a doctor and a Ukrainian language teacher. It is likely that her parents spent their whole lives saving from the huge salaries and pensions of a doctor and a language teacher in order to register ownership of all these plots and a modest house between 2017 and 2021. And God forbid to assume that this property appeared due to the fact that since 2016 their daughter became a respected person in Vinnitsa - the head of the department of endoscopic and cardiovascular surgery of the VNMU named after. And it was after this appointment, by chance, that her parents managed to privatize and acquire all these plots. I wonder if your retired parents are as successful as Mrs. Victoria’s parents?

Good artists copy. Great artists steal

In 2023, the National Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education began proceedings on scientific integrity and the presence of signs of plagiarism in the doctoral dissertation and scientific works of scientist Victoria Petrushenko, but this proceedings was blocked by a court decision. Here is how her fellow medical scientists react to such an act:

What is interesting in this story with plagiarism is that evil tongues are gossiping about the analysis of the dissertation of the opera singer and head of the department of surgery at Vinnytsia National Medical University. N.I. Pirogov Victoria Petrushenko, who discovered plagiarism from a Russian book and 10 other dissertations. Victoria Petrushenko's doctoral dissertation was found to contain plagiarism from a 2005 Russian book and 10 other dissertations. It is also reported that her experiment on dogs to study pancreatitis was falsified.

Despite the negative identified, the heroine of this article does not give up and appeals to the fair and incorruptible Vinnytsia District Administrative Court, which on March 6, 2024, in case No. 120/2676/24, issued a ruling prohibiting the National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education from taking any action to review case on the complaint/report of A.Yu. Smirnov about the presence of facts of academic plagiarism in the doctoral dissertation and scientific article of V.V. Petrushenko. (registration No. 10-24-AD dated February 14, 2024), until the court decision in this case enters into legal force.

In her case, it would be better not to buy such an expensive resolution, but to spend only 250 hryvnia to pay the registration fee to change the Russian mailbox in the public organization she heads, which will be discussed below. Although, in the conditions of large-scale military aggression against Ukraine, probably stealing at least something from Muscovites, even the texts of dissertations, is not a sin, but a victory!

My address is not a house or a street, my address is the Soviet Union

In April 2017, respected physician Victoria Petrushenko founded and headed the public organization “Podolsk Association of Minimally Invasive Surgery.” The unified state register of enterprises and organizations of Ukraine still indicates the following official email address of this organization: radega09@mail.ru Despite the fact that since May 2017, a presidential decree came into force, which put into force the decision of the National Security and Defense Council on blocking access to the Internet to mail ru resources, Victoria Petrushenko has still not been able to change the official email address of the organization she heads from the Russian domain.

Full name: NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION "PODILSK ASSOCIATION OF MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY"

Code: 41300822

Registration date: 04/25/2017

Head: Petrushenko Victoria Viktorovna Representative: Radioga Yaroslav Vladimirovich

Reflecting on why a public organization that is active and submits official tax reports has an email address in the domain zone of the aggressor country for seven years in a row, we come to the following assumptions. Apparently this is refined redneckness, because in order to make changes to information about a public organization, you need to pay as much as 250 hryvnia registration fee to the budget. Or, what’s worse, this is a deliberate disregard for the Ukrainian state’s ban on the use of Russian postal services for seven years. At the same time, Doctor of Medical Sciences Petrushenko on his Facebook page posts fiery texts with his fingers on the keyboard about the superhuman feat of the Ukrainian Army, the inevitability of the victory of the Nation and the inviolability of State Sovereignty! I wonder from what email address the official correspondence between the public organization she heads and the tax authorities is conducted from? It is sincerely bewildering why the state control body, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, has not yet paid attention to the Russian postal service, which is contained in the state register in relation to this public organization?

Leadership style: signature forgery and corruption

Despite the fact that since September 2023, Victoria Petrushenko is no longer the acting rector of the university, but only the chairman of the Academic Council, she continues to be in the rector’s office. However, we hope that soon she will change this cozy chair to another where her responsibility for her actions will be considered.

On March 27, 2024, criminal proceedings were entered into the unified register of pre-trial investigations under number 1202402001000476 on the fact of forging signatures on the minutes of a meeting of the counting commission for participation in the election of the rector of Vinnytsia Medical University. At the same time, the purpose of the fake protocol was clearly defined - to include voters in the lists of voters Victoria Petrushenko needed, but she did not take into account that the university has honest employees who did not commit a criminal offense in order to satisfy the needs of the chairman of the Academic Council by any means to obtain the rector's chair, which she still doesn't want to leave.

During the short period of her duties as rector, Victoria Petrushenko was remembered by her colleagues for the fact that only she decides whether bonuses and additional payments will be awarded to teachers, who will work and who will be fired by creating “ethical commissions” managed by her, because she is the chairman of the Academic Council of the only authority at the university . If the subordinate is loyal to her, then he will receive allowances and bonuses, and otherwise - a bare salary or dismissal. Thanks to this manual control, Mrs. Medic in the 2023-2024 university elections clearly determined the list and number of subordinate employees who need to be submitted to vote as candidates for the election. Which led to the above-mentioned falsifications. Having placed her people in the university secretariat, Petrushenko “filters” all incoming and outgoing correspondence that concerns her and gives instructions whether to forward it further or withhold it. He illegally gathers agitation in the rector’s office regarding himself, as the future rector who has “already decided everything,” while threatening employees who have their own opinion and vision.

Using government funds allocated for the educational process of students, the university purchased expensive medical equipment. However, it is used on the instructions of Petrushenko not for its intended purpose, but for another purpose, determined only by Mrs. Petrushenko. If funds are allocated for the purchase of equipment for the educational process, that is, ensuring the educational process, then the equipment should be used to ensure, first of all, the training of students, interns, graduate students, and not lie unnecessarily or be used for other purposes. However, the Ministry of Health is turning a blind eye to this for now.

As already noted, Vinnytsia National Medical University has on its balance sheet real estate, educational buildings, recreation centers and the like. However, as a result of Ms. Petrushenko’s leadership, the commission identified a number of violations of budget legislation. Thus, she allowed departments to operate without a medical license, although the commission for the accreditation of certain educational programs made comments about this, gave instructions to place the departments of pedagogy and others in a building on Stus Street, which is an unfinished construction and has not been put into operation after major repairs, wasted funds on financing of the Sokolets recreation center, intended for the health improvement of university employees and students, which has already been recorded by relevant inspections.

Consequences for society

Greed in the scientific medical field has far-reaching consequences for society, including: - Increasing distrust in the medical community, which can lead to refusal of vaccination, non-compliance with medical recommendations and other negative consequences for public health.

— Economic burden on the medical education system, since misuse of budget funds by people like Mrs. Petrushenko increases overall medical costs, which, in turn, increases the tax burden.

Plagiarism not only violates the rights of other authors, but also contradicts the ethical principles of science, education and professional activity. Doesn't Victoria Petrushenko realize that her plagiarism undermines the idea of ​​honesty, truthfulness and independence in scientific, academic and professional endeavors and undermines the authority of VNMU.